


Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

by raendown



Series: Commission Work [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 14:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17285735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Kakashi takes shelter from a freak blizzard in a cave that looks relatively harmless. What he finds within is anything but.





	Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Uintuva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uintuva/gifts).



> My very first commission! Thank you so much for the support!

Kakashi’s fingers swirled through the air absently as he peered around the inside of the cave. Most people didn’t have the imagination to think you could do anything with lightning magic other than the obvious use of shooting bolts of it around willy-nilly. People with an actual brain in their head – people like him – were able to find other ways to utilize the gifts they had been born with. Sure it would have been much easier to warm himself in this surprise blizzard if he had been a fire wielder but he had made due in the past with his lightning and he would survive again with it now.

Separating the heat from his lightning was a delicate business but it was a trick he had learned to do when he was barely in to his double digits and it took very little of his attention, leaving him free to scout the unexpectedly spacious area in search of wood. Magic could only keep him warm for as long as he was awake to maintain it, after all. Kakashi was many things but a master of runes he was not.

To his dismay, however, there was precious little wood to be found, barely enough to scrape together a small mound that would probably sputter out before he managed to fall asleep if he lit it now. With a sigh he hunkered down and prepared to stay awake for as long as he could before lighting it. Hopefully the worst of the snow would have abated by tomorrow; staying awake half the night to keep himself warm would leave his magic stores seriously depleted, which would make staying here another night dangerous indeed.

He was kicking at his pitiful collection of sticks when he dropped his head back against the wall of his shelter and let his eyes stare aimlessly upwards, only to narrow them in interest. Why was the ceiling covered in scratch marks?

Actually once he looked a little closer they weren’t scratch marks at all. Gouged in to the rock, protected by a thick layer of accumulated ice, the entire ceiling was covered with ancient sigils. The closer he looked the more mesmerizing he found them. Whatever hand had carved them was steady and artistic with an eye for beauty, confident and bold. Not a single stroke was out of place in any of them and each sat a perfect equal distance from the others around it. It was beautiful.

It was glowing.

Kakashi jolted and scrambled to regain his feet when he realized that the sigils had slowly begun to gather a soft blue light while he sat there staring mindlessly. He’d had enough encounters with the weird runes that Obito sometimes dug out of his massive family treasury to know that glowing was not a good thing, glowing usually meant that one should begin running quickly and immediately. And he did try. His sad little attempt at preparing a fire scattered when he crashed through it hurrying towards the entrance, ignoring the sound of wood cracking underfoot as he reached the entrance only to be thrown back when he encountered an invisible barrier.

“Maa,” he mumbled under his breath. “That can’t mean anything good.” Banging a fist against the barrier proved it to be solid so he turned around and swept his eyes from side to side as he tried to figure out what was going on. A trap of some sort, perhaps, meant to capture unwary travelers. What for he didn’t know.

His ruminations didn’t get much farther than that. All thoughts in his head jangled to a terrified halt when he heard something _rumble_ from deeper within the cavern, down the dark passageway that he hadn’t explored because it somehow hadn’t even registered on his mind. Now that his attention was drawn to it he realized he hadn’t even seen it until now. Only seriously powerful magic could have concealed something as massive as a giant tunnel from his senses, keener than most as they were.

Swallowing thickly and pressing back against the barrier, Kakashi prayed to the Five Temples as he watched the shadows in the passageway shift and sway. There was something massive hiding in there and it had clearly noticed him. And he just as clearly had no way to escape it. Suddenly he regretted leaving behind that ‘emergency teleportation rune’ that Obito had tried to press on him before he left home. It hadn’t seemed safe at the time – most of Obito’s gifts weren’t even if they were always well intended – but at the moment even getting caught in the void between spaces seemed like a better option than getting eaten by whatever the fuck was about to come out of that darkness.

“ **YOU SMELL OF HUMAN.** ” The voice rumbled through his very skull when it spoke and Kakashi could not have said how exactly he knew but immediately he became aware of three things: the creature was a male, he was ancient, and he was more curious than angry at being disturbed. None of that managed to completely abate the fear clutching at his chest though.

“Makes sense,” he murmured in to the cold air. “I was human last time I checked.”

“ **WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR IN THE FACE OF DANGER. HOW NOVEL.** ”

Kakashi resisted the urge to pull nervously at his collar. In part because it would only make his fear even more obvious to a creature who could probably smell it on him and in part because doing so would dislodge his tightly wound scarf. He didn’t want to die cold, after all.

“ **TELL ME, WHAT BRINGS YOU TO MY NEST, LITTLE ONE?** ”

“Well you know...if not _warmer_ it just sort of seemed…less cold in here. Just trying to survive and what not. And what reason have you to, uh, kill me? Any chance I could…talk you out of that?” He offered a winning smile before realizing that it was covered by the scarf pulled up over half of his face.

Smoke drifting out from the shadows. Or rather, he realized after a moment, not smoke but steam, massive white clouds of hot breath steaming in the cold air as the creature chuckled with a rumbling sound he would have compared to rock grinding together thousands of feet beneath the earth. He wasn’t sure where that comparison came from but once the thought was there he couldn’t shake it.

He staggered a moment later when the ground shifted under him, shaking with the force of massive footsteps as the creature moved at last. When he looked up the shadows were just parting and his first impression was of white purer than snow could ever hope to be. Millions upon millions of glittering scales covered the sinuous body, all lean muscle and graceful movements despite his size. His eyes were the same deep red as one of Kakashi’s own, the same as the three slashes equally spaced around his snout which also matched to the line going down Kakashi’s face, and if not for the ceiling of the cavern being so low it was clear that his head would been held three times the height with pride.

“Well aren’t you something,” Kakashi breathed, only half aware he’d said anything. The dragon parted its lips to reveal fangs as thick as his arm and just as long. Steam rushed out in another rumbling chuckle but when he spoke his jaw moved not at all.

They were speaking in each other’s _minds_.

“ **YOU DO NOT HAVE THE MARK OF DEATH, HUMAN.** ” Between one step and the next his form began to shift, shrinking and changing shape, until within moments there was only a human man striding across the snow clad in nothing but mere wisps of cloth draped loosely around him to preserve little more than his modesty, held in place with what looked like his own scales. When he spoke this time it was at a much more normal volume – but it was still only inside their heads. “ **You are marked for something far more precious than that.** ”

“Ah, you’ll have to forgive me if that just sounds _more_ ominous.” Kakashi chewed on his bottom lip as he watched the dragon in human form cover the last few inches between them, grinning to reveal that his teeth were still just as sharp in this body.

“ **I will not hurt you. Tell me your name.** ”

“Maa, will you talk normally if I do? _Can_ you talk normally?” The creature looked more amused than offended, giving him the confidence to go on. “You just…it’s weird, your mouth not moving when you say something.”

Nodding, the creature tilted its head to look at him from another angle. Something about his eyes made Kakashi feel as though he were being pursues despite the fact that they were both standing completely still. Even stranger, the thought sent a thrill down his spine that was either fear or excitement and he couldn’t tell which.

“My name is Kakashi,” he said, adding a curious lilt to the last word in the hope that his possible doom might return the favor in kind.

“Kakashi,” the dragon creature rolled his name through his mouth as though tasting each syllable. “Welcome, Kakashi. My name is Tobirama and by ancient rites you have been marked.”

That certainly didn’t sound like anything good.

“Marked how? By what?”

He nearly leapt out of his skin when the creature, Tobirama, lifted a hand and brushed the side of his face with one finger tipped by a nail that tapered in to something more like a claw. This time when he felt the sensations sparking through him he recognized one that had absolutely no place in this encounter, something that hadn’t plagued him outside of his favorite forbidden novels in a long time. Why in the Temples’ names he should find this beast attractive was beyond him but by the Sage he did.

“Okay. Touching. Sure. Any chance we could get back to the part where you said I was marked? By what exactly? For what purpose?”

“To be mine,” Tobirama told him, teeth bared eyes shining with a dangerous sort of satisfaction. He peeled Kakashi’s scarf down with the tip of one claw and cupped his cheek. Then something in the air grew bright and close and in the next moment they were gone from the cave – or rather they had reappeared in what looked like a different part of what must have been an entire system of caves.

Usually it took several hours of preparation and the right combination of crystals to complete a teleportation spell and here it had been done without any of that, not so much as a single gesture or word, seemingly with barely even a thought. Kakashi would have been boggled if he hadn’t been so distracted with his new location.

 _So this is a dragon’s den_ , was all he could think. Above him the ceiling was coated in glittering ice protecting the same web of glowing sigils, blue and white and so beautiful it made him ache to look at them. The room they were in was massive and yet mostly filled with a bed that could have easily fit a fully grown dragon. It was a wonder when he found himself pushed down on to one edge of the mattress only to feel the surface under him as soft and springy as though it had never cradled a creature three times the size of a house. More magic at work, undoubtedly.

He was just thinking of how he wasn’t sure how many more surprises his poor heart could take when Tobirama pressed him down and gracefully spread out across his lap like a great white cat. Or perhaps a very small dragon, as it were. Kakashi held his arms out awkwardly until Tobirama huffed and drew them back in to set them atop his own head.

“Maa…so when you said…yours…”

“ **Mine** ,” Tobirama rumbled without moving or opening his eyes, a languid grin of satisfaction practically taking up his whole face. “ **My mate, come to me after all the years of lonely waiting. You are late but I will forgive you this transgression.** ”

“How kind of you,” Kakashi mumbled faintly. “Am I stuck here?”

Tobirama opened one eye to watch him very carefully. “ **Is the thought abhorrent to you?** ”

Something in his tone had changed, for the first time afflicted with the slightest hint of uncertainty, and as they stared at each other Kakashi recalled his vague memories of the elective he had taken at the University where he studied his lightning abilities, the class on ancient beasts that he had chosen on a whim. Kushina-sensei loved kitsune above all else but even she had spoken in a reverent tone when teaching them all she could of dragons. The one lesson that came back to him with sudden clarity was that dragons, like many other mythical beasts of unknown origin, had very complicated yet very sacred mating rituals.

Watching the tension slowly grow in Tobirama’s shoulders even as he remained deceptively at ease, Kakashi determined that this creature who could tear him limb from limb without effort was actually _nervous_ for his opinion. Tobirama wanted him to stay. More than that, he wanted Kakashi to want to stay. Something in his deep magic had told him that Kakashi was the one he had been waiting for – presumably for decades, dragons’ lifespans were unbelievable – but no matter how ingrained his own instincts were he could not force them upon a human.

Probably the most important decision of his entire life, this should have been something he asked for a little time to think about. He had always been someone who showed up late and jumped in with both feet though.

“Are you going to sleep on me like this a lot?” he asked. Tobirama blinked once before the tension released and his entire body began to rumble with a purring noise.

“ **Yes. All dragons slumber upon their most treasured possessions.** ”

“Well isn’t that sweet.”

Tobirama snorted and Kakashi dared to pet the hair that his hands had been forcefully set upon. He was rewarded with an even louder rumbling purr, almost enough to echo off the walls in this great cavern. It was lucky, he supposed, that he hadn’t been on any sort of official errand. Asuma would forgive him if he happened to show up late for his visit. He could always claim the weather had held him back and he wouldn’t exactly be lying.

He wondered if Tobirama would be open to going out in to the world with him. Either way, life as a dragon’s partner sounded like a grand new adventure. Kakashi closed his eyes and laid back on the furs underneath them with his fingers still idly carding through his companion’s beautiful hair. He was just happy to have stumbled upon this adventure without having to go look for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Grumpy at the fact that I can't change my font size and had to set dragon-speak in all caps. It doesn't look as right. :\


End file.
